Microsoft acquires FieldOne for Dynamics offering

Microsoft has acquired field service management solution provider FieldOne to bolster its Dynamics CRM offering.

The deal, for an undisclosed sum, comes four months after the two companies signed a strategic alliance to allow customers access to Dynamics and FIeldOne’s tools in ‘a single integrated package’.

Microsoft says field service management is a ‘specific but critically important area of customer service, providing companies with the ability to deliver end-to-end field service’.

Bob Stutz, Microsoft Dynamics CRM corporate vice president, says FieldOne is a ‘great fit’ for Dynamics CRM, adding to its customer service capabilities, which includes chat, knowledge management and self-service functionality from Parature, which Microsoft acquired in 2014.

“Like Parature, FieldOne is offered to customers as a cloud service,” Stutz says. “It’s built on Microsoft technology for fast integration, it already works great with other Microsoft productivity offerings like Office 365 and SharePoint, and has cross-platform capabilities, meaning it can work on different devices enhancing the mobile experience which is so critically important in field service management.”

Stutz says FieldOne was built from the ground up to leverage Dynamics CRM, enabling customers to take advantage of its capabilities ‘right away’.

He says the announcement reflects the investments Microsoft is making ‘to deliver true systems of intelligence – enhancing our current offerings with predictive learning and analytics to deliver an intelligent, proactive customer engagement solution.

“Field service businesses are aggressively trying to move away from a reactive break-fix model to a predictive service based model.

“With this acquisition, Microsoft can help companies tap the potential of predictive service by bringing together the powerful combination of FieldOne, Azure IoT and Cortana Analytics.

“That means that organizations can use insights that effectively provide servicing proactively while streamlining the provisioning of service to significantly reduce costs,” Stutz says.